Answers

Definitely from someone else with a successful entrepreneurial career in food.

1. You need "smart money," not just money. My wife was an entrepreneur in food for 8 years and did it herself. The amount of bizarre stuff that happens there is unthinkable. Having someone to help see around corners is a secret weapon you want to have.

2. You need someone who understands the mechanics of the business, who understands that turnover every three months in delivery drivers and dishwashers screwing the hostesses in the alley is nothing to worry about. Who understand the pay-back periods and the labor of love.

First, a startup with <$10m/yr revenue almost surely has nothing to offer another company that is interesting to them for BD. Not enough attention, not enough users, not enough revenue-sharing, etc..

BD only works when BOTH sides move the needle on something important to them, which usually means revenue but it can mean attention or branding or something. If you can't fulfill your end, then it's not BD. It's something else, like trying to be an affiliate.

Also, people who's title in LinkedIn are BD are not the sort of folks used to moving the needle for startups.

I have literally *never* seen a person with the title "BD" at a startup make a difference. Usually they're the subject of ridicule behind closed doors.

Not to say there isn't the person who could. I know a CEO of a startup that currently does $20m/yr and he's the definition of the consummate BD guy. But you cannot bet yourself on finding that unicorn.

Talk to any editor/writer at any place that you'd like to get written up in -- blogger, digital media, or print -- and they'll all tell you they'd rather have a relationship with a founder or C_O than a PR person.

Meaning: *they* will be more receptive to *you* even more so than the PR agency that you spend $5k-$25k/mo on.

Paying a PR agency sometimes gets inches, but rarely makes a difference you can measure on your financial statement. Ask them to track their results and the impact to your business and see what they say. They will take 15 minutes explaining how that's not possible. Correct, that's the point.

So, do something that IS useful -- create genuine relationships with people you want writing about you.

P.S. I do like the idea of an internal social media or even "media relations" person, because it's still internal. Just make sure the CEO/founder does the interviewing.

For the business, the advantage is the *potential* to grow bigger, faster, and the disadvantage is you're taking on new risk.

The real challenge is to solve for what you want from the business, and -- cheesy though I know it sounds -- from life. Do you want to stop running this company some day? Do you want to pull a decent amount of money from the company for 10 years or go for a larger sum? Are you still interested in running a business like this or do you yearn for a new challenge?

Even then, there are many more options than just raising money or not, and what kind of money from what kind of investor.

Therefore, the first thing is to decide what you want -- which is a sort of CEO-therapy -- and then you solve for the path which maximizes the chance of that path, and also takes some risk/money off the table depending on the situation.

I've been blogging for almost 6 years, now with 40,000 RSS subscribers. I can tell you I have 0% ability to predict which post will be popular, causing lots of retweets and comments, and which are duds. Not time of year, not topic, not how excited I am with the piece, not length.

What that means, to me, is that you write a lot of good stuff and the conversations increase overall, but post-to-post it's necessarily unknowable.

There's lots of ways to experiment. For example, raise prices but then use "if you buy before Friday it's only $X." Then you can play with the offer week after week without actually having "raised prices."

I have talked to Jason a couple times now as I have gone through the process of starting and building a company. I am amazed the depth of his knowledge and advice at each stage of my journey. Couldn't ask for a better person to talk to.

Jason was great to talk to and walked through several of the ideas, concerns, and approaches I am taking to my business. Look forward to speaking with him again soon. I know it's great for the future of my business and for me as an entrepreneur.

2nd call with Jason... he was able to very quickly identify a couple of sticking points in the business and where I should focus on to get growth. Gave me both great strategy and higher level thinking while helping me feel better and get a better birds eye view.

I got great insights into how to grow my business plus came away with some inspiration too :) Also, it's a worthwhile experience listening to Jason think through problems and generate potential solutions. I learned a lot. Great!

Jason was great - he definitely cleared up some confusing stuff for me regarding an acquisition I'm considering. I feel much more confident about making the best decision now I've spoken to Jason. That one call will probably end up being worth 100's of thousands of dollars to me. Thanks mate!

Jason gave us a no-bullshit opinion about our business from the point of view of someone unrelated to us or our industry. This was exactly what we were looking for, and it helped us further clarify our options going forward.

Jason was very helpful. Quick paced call with no BS digging into potential problems and mistakes I was making in the business.

He helped me with planning a phone sales strategy, a better way to measure our churn and segment customers, a missing link in our MVP process, and great insights on who we might need to hire next, as well as clarifying potential with investors.